ADDED: "It is what we have been and what we can be again" ≈ "Make America Great Again."
September 12, 2021
"At a time when religious bigotry might’ve flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith. That is the nation I know."
"At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw America’s reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees. That is the nation I know. At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action. That is the nation I know. This is not mere nostalgia. It is the truest version of ourselves. It is what we have been and what we can be again."
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Said the guy who dragged us into full scale wars and was responsible for the deaths of scores of thousands. He should be rotting in prison.
His war in Iraq worked out great though. Joe Biden's brother got a two billion dollar contract to rebuild the homes that we bombed there. All's well that ends well.
All of the Muslim "embracers" at the time were calling him Bushitler. I remember.
Yeah. Well, Bush has a few things to answer for, doesn't he? Let's roll through that rationale for invading Iraq again, shall we?
Bush 43 is ignoring the elephant in the room. He campaigned against nation-building in 2000, attempting a contrast with Clinton in Haiti, Yugoslavia, and Kosovo. Then he invaded Iraq after letting OBL do a fade in Afghanistan. He should stand back in humility.
These guys all think we are stupid, don't they? They are entitled to their opinions, but we don't have to believe them, or even argue with them.
George Bush compared most of the people that voted for him to the Taliban.
F George.
He was the epitome of the globalist betrayer. Trump was too nice to these people.
"But then there’s this disdain for pluralism in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols. They are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them."
Who is Bush talking about? Why won't he name names? How is this kind of language going to bring us together as a nation?
Yeah, I know people are upset with GW because he made a remark about how our danger lies from without and within. I agree with that, though I probably disagree with the problem from within. I think it's source is different than the one our government is trying to prop up.
That said, I found it amazing that Kamala showed up right after him, telling us how horrible we were to Muslims and people of color right after 9/11.
I must have missed it. I thought, despite a couple of incidents- small incidents- we were retrained and went out of our way to not offend members of a religion that just committed a horrible slaughter of people on our soil, then celebrated joyously in their native lands.
GW saw the best of us. Kamala saw (and sees) the worst of us. That pretty much describes Democrats vs Others in this country.
I saw as immediately take up arms against Iraqis what the world described as a rush to war. Our last President ended that war and withdrew our forces while leaving intact a functioning and friendly government.
I am trying to remember Muslims in America or around the world embracing the USA and being apologetic for or angry at their co-religionists who did this in the name of Allah. I can't think of any on TV, but my one close Muslim friend behaved very well. Those people at CAIR distinguished themselves with "yeah, but..." rhetoric. I remember Bush43 going to some mosque and meeting with a bunch of dodgy clerics.
Speaking for myself, I don't need to be lectured by Bush43 on this topic. The problem was never the American public's over-reaction to 9/11. That fear of hoi polloi was a fantasy of the elites, seen again in the over-hyping of the January 6 riot.
The problem was and remains the American government's reaction to 9/11. Did people really want us to invade Iraq with an inadequate force and then try to build a liberal democracy there? No, what people really wanted was for OBL and his team to be hunted down and killed. We had to wait almost ten years for that, and Obama did it over the objections of Biden.
Bush is celebrating his own good character.
Virtue that goes public turns into the worst sort of evil, says Hannah Arendt.
"I saw America’s reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees"
Hey, W, speaking of 9/11, why should Muslim refugees come to America when there are, what, 59 Muslim countries where they can settle? How many Ilhan Omars do we need, and how do they benefit America?
And what meaning does any welcome have when "immigrants" just barge in, uninvited? Does that bother you at all, W? Are open borders part of who we are, you self-righteous SOB?
Fuck You and Eat Shit George W. Bush. No American needs to be their best selves and ever again go and die in Iraq or Afghanistan for your family.
Bush did something very important just after 9/11, which was then, and remains today, mostly unspoken. He stopped the genocide of millions, tens of millions, of Muslims in revenge for the attacks on the US. It could have happened, lotsa people wanted it to happen, it might have happened, had he not been such a good crisis leader for our country. Don't bother denying this truth, you either know it is true in your heart, from living through 9/11 and the weeks after, or you don't. His speech yesterday was of a part with his correct action from 20 years ago.
I give him credit for preventing such a mistake from happening. Don't overthink yesterday's speech, it is simply a continuation of his former policies.
GWB ran a torture chamber at Abu Ghraib, and now he only emerges to criticize the people who voted for him for not living up to his standards of decency.
The biggest problem with Bush's war on terroir is that he was never able to bring himself to name our enemy...Islam.
Islam has been at war with Western Civilization for 1,500 years, whether we admit it or not. Islam is incompatible with Western Civilization, if only because they refuse to co-exist with us.
Just wind in sails…
In retrospect I have to agree with the Lefties.
GW Bush is and was an idiot.
Former presidents should focus on self-agrandizing libraries and grandchildren.
He stopped the genocide of millions, tens of millions, of Muslims in revenge for the attacks on the US.
Normally I would agree with this. I want to agree with this. However, history has shown that the only way we get respite from the attacks of Islam is to kill enough of them that they stop attacking us.
"Don’t you see, we mustn’t disobey them. We must take care of them and we must help them."
Who despised his own voters more? George W Bush, or John McCain?
Nice irony, Mikee.
You guys are right. Bush's mistake was his failure to achieve a final solution to the Islam question.
In answer to tim in Vermont, Donald Trump.
I thought Cheney was right when he said that the people of Iraq would greet us as liberators. Who knew then that Saddam was about the most humane and enlightened ruler that the Iraqis could produce?.....Saddam certainly inspired his followers to fight for him with more tenacity and ferocity than any leader there or in Afghanistan that we have ever recruited to our side.....Am I the only person here who thought that our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan would have happier results than they have thus far produced?
Gahrie: I agree with you in principle, and suggest only that the deaths of millions should be timed, and performed in such a manner, if at all possible solely to prevent the unnecessary deaths of tens or hundreds of millions. And if fewer deaths will do the job, don't be greedy. Gates of Vienna? Go to it. Even El Cid didn't spend his whole life killing only Muslims.
What a great poll question!
My vote is McCain, but Bush is a strong runner up.
>Blogger tim in vermont said...
>Who despised his own voters more? George W Bush, or John McCain?
Notice lately how every traditional politician's redemption for their depredations and calamities while in office is now immediately taken at the expense of defaming the people they governed with the least power and against whom they inflicted the most damage.
Trump not appearing with the Clintons, Bush, Obama and Biden was great optics... for Trump.
That text reminds me of the Field of Dreams baseball speech.
link to video
Amadeus: I wasn't being ironical. And I pray that the day never comes when such killing will be an existential choice.
Temujin said...
GW saw the best of us. Kamala saw (and sees) the worst of us. That pretty much describes Democrats vs Others in this country.
How can you be so naive?
They spoke at the same event because they are on the same team and they think the same thing about the people that voted for him. He has never had anything but support for BLM while calling his voters insurrectionists.
He started 2 wars and he wouldn't let us finish them. He never should have started something he wouldn't finish.
And ever since then he has helped the Obama team destroy our country. He is a combination of stupid and evil.
'That is the nation I know.'
It's not that catchy...quit trying to make it a 'thing.'
A time when people with testicles were called men, and those without were called women. That is the nation I know.
Now do your own...it's not difficult.
No enemies to the left. Singling out "nativism" as a problem, no doubt referring to Trump and anyone who questions open borders. Is it really true that there can't be any possible downside to open borders? Even if actual terrorists are welcomed in?
"...we have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within.
"There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But then there’s this disdain for pluralism in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols. They are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them."
Does he mean the unarmed Jan. 6 people? Really? Haven't there been a lot of political protests, mainly on the left, that have disrupted the proceedings of a legislature for a few hours? Who's defiling national symbols, like statues?
Ah, George W. Not as effective or goodhearted as he'd like to think, but a hell of a lot more so than those who hate him think. A bit like the country he led.
As for bigotry, it's funny: I heard NPR talk yesterday - like Kamala; thanks, Temujin - about how widespread and vicious the anti-Muslim bigotry was. And you can find examples. I know of three people were murdered (one a Sikh, by someone not just evil but ignorant). I don't doubt that the examples decrease in severity and increase in frequency from there, until you get a very large number of Muslims who sooner or later got a nasty remark from some asshole somewhere.
But I'll note this. My father's favorite Persian restaurant closed in 1980, because almost no one wanted to patronize it with the hostage crisis going on. The city I lived in in 2001 had an Afghan restaurant (ironically, owned by the Karzai family). It was mobbed. Virtue-signaling? Perhaps, but I still found it touching, and the food was excellent.
In the immediate aftermath I was concerned for the well-being of a couple of Arab friends, but if they met any hostility they didn't find it worth mentioning.
Bush sold out to the War Establishment using the fig leaf that everybody in the world wants freedom, ignoring what we know about human nature. After all, when America could be honest, we openly spoke of taking in those who took risks for freedom. Not everyone, only the best. So now if anyone wants to bring in one person less than the corrupt Establishment and America-hating Marxist/progressive/leftists, the you are labeled a racist. Even if the immigrant is classified by the left (and the FBI for terrorist statistics) as white. Of course this makes no sense except in the interests of Corporate America, the War Machine, and the kill America Project. America has become a commodity, the Golden Goose that feeds every selfish interest, all in the name of the America all profess to love.
That is also why they must persecute anyone not on board with their schemes - patriots (I.e. domestic terrorists who only want the Constitutional deal), Evangelical Christians (who recognize evil vs. good based on God’s values), and populists (who dare to want America to serve the interests of its citizens).
I agree with Gahrie more than I agree with mikee. From time to time I wonder what would have happened had Bush told Saudi Arabia to cough up a billion dollars blood money for each of the 2,977 people who died in the Towers, plus foot the bill for rebuilding the Towers, and tell them that if they balk we plan to invade their country and pump their oil fields dry.
Learned people have reasons why this would lead to ghastly results. But learned people argued that bombing Hanoi and mining Haiphong harbor would absolutely bring Russia and Mainland China into the Vietnam War. Didn’t happen.
I found the speech disgusting.
It was done at the crash site of Flight 93. Instead of talking about the heroism of the WTC first responders, or "Lets Roll" or the patriotism and unity that took hold of the USA, Bush spent his time attacking Trump supporters as "domestic extremists" and cheerleading for immigration and refugees. Instead of a speech about 911 that brought us together, he used it to further divide us. Imagine an Ex-POTUS in 1961, using the 20th Pearl Harbor anniversery as an excuse to attack Barry Goldwater and his supporters!
But that's George Bush. He loves foreigners, immigrants, and Muslims. The only people he hates are the Right-wing Republicans who voted for him.
If millions or billions are going to die, they should be Muslims.
I never thought highly of Dubya, but he has only gone lower in my opinion since 9/11. I could see the necessity of some response in Afghanistan, but the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a halfassed war crime. (We only halfass everything, since the war-winners got old.)
Bush bears a lot of responsibility for the Americans killed and maimed in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks wanted to bash the Taliban and go home. Bush and neocons like Kristol decided to create a new nation where there had never been anything but tribes. Iraq had what I thought were possibilities. I was wrong. There was never a chance of success in Afghanistan once the nation builders got going.
Biden botched the withdrawal which was always going to be a problem because the Taliban are Pakistan's creature.
Big Mike: "Learned people have reasons why this would lead to ghastly results. But learned people argued that bombing Hanoi and mining Haiphong harbor would absolutely bring Russia and Mainland China into the Vietnam War. Didn’t happen."
Russia and Mainland China were brought into the Vietnam war. Russians flew Vietnamese fighters, directed artillery fire, ground controlled intercepts, interrogation/torture of prisoners, etc. And it wasn't Vietnamese-built tanks that rolled down HWY 1 into Saigon.
Having said that, yes, they weren't "brought" openly on a large scale into the war. Plausible deniability.
Interestingly, it was the ChiComs who had to send large scale forces to smack the Vietnamese commies around in 1979 near the border areas.
But I'll note this. My father's favorite Persian restaurant closed in 1980, because almost no one wanted to patronize
In 1980, i was working for Pizza Pit (in ames, not madison). One of our other delivery men was from Iran; he got hostile reactions (sometimes Violent) while delivering.
People would say things to him, like:
"Go back to Iran, and your ayatollah, you $^%@*^* %^^*^%* ^$^*#^"
Which bothered him, a LOT; because
A) he COULDN'T go back
B) if he COULD, he'd be shot and/or imprisoned
C) his family was Still over there, and in hiding
Still, he got free left over pizzas (like the rest of us), so it wasn't ALL bad
Regarding the notional oppression of Muslims in this country, the Left is never going to get over what the FDR administration did to Nisei and Japanese residents in World War II...FDR put them in concentration camps, and the government took their most valuable property. Take a good, hard look at how that liberal paragon, David Bazelon, spent his time as the head of the Office of Alien Property after World War II, and see who ended up with the goodies.
It is the Left that did this--behaving as they usually do when they are in power. And they project their guilt over their thuggery onto the Right.
I never heard anyone say that we should kill millions of Muslims in response to 9/11, except as an obvious joke in the lunchroom ("Let's turn Iraq/Afghanistan into a glass parking lot.") I missed the global catastrophe for Muslims that Bush43 avoided by invading a foreign country in a fruitless attempt to influence events in the Middle East. I just saw the catastrophe that he and Obama stumbled into. If you want to argue that Bush43, Kerry, McCain, Romney, Obama, B and H Clinton and Biden had the same, deeply flawed strategy (with different tactical approaches), I would agree. Trump tried something different (punitive actions only) and was not successful either.
George W. Bush is a fool, and that is the kindest thing I can say about him. I voted for him both times, but I don't regret any vote I ever made more than the one in 2000- I knew by 2002 that I had made a grave error, and if the Democrats had nominated anyone else in 2004, I would have gladly voted for that person, and did in 2008.
I don't know for certain that Bush was talking about his base in that little remark about "same foul spirit"- he could easily have been talking about wokesters- but given everything else he has said in the last 6 years, I no longer give him the benefit of the doubt.
Wince above makes the point I wanted to make with my own comment- Trump did himself good by not appearing with these worthless political leaders- I would be ashamed to be seen on the same stage with those people.
The Bushes demonstrate how contemptible our political class is. Unfortunately they are so good at destroying our country by stealth that we never realized it until now.
I rarely, if ever, find myself as I do today in complete disagreement with 99% of our fellow Althousians. I believe that W and Cheney acted correctly but with imperfect and incomplete information. On balance, we have been very considerably safer over the last 20 years as a direct result of the actions of W and his father. My only beef is that we should have maintained a continuous and significant military presence both in Iraq and Afghanistan just as we have done in Germany since the end of WWII.
The shit will certainly hit the fan now that we have left the region, particularly, with this last massive clusterfuck, and it won't be so easy to clean up the next time.
As Ann Coulter once said [paraphrasing], if the Islamists were that advanced, they would have flush toilets by now.
- Krumhorn
A plausible explanation I've read (don't remember where) for why George W Bush seems to be a squishy RINO type these days is that's he trying to help his daughters be acceptable to the crowds they run with, especially Jenna Bush who is on NBC morning TV.
I don't know if that's true, though, because I don't think he's ever been an especially deep or nuanced thinker. He's not simple minded but he is simplistic.
You can argue the pros and cons of Bush and Biden and Trump forever, but I think it's fair to say that none of them had the disastrous effects on America that Saddam and the Taliban had on their respective countries.....I suppose Bush made a mistake getting us into Iraq and Afghanistan and I know Biden fucked up getting us out, but there are mistakes and there are mistakes. Saddam and the Taliban fucked up in the enduring way that blights a country for centuries.....I wonder why western and Islamic scholars never examine why these countries keep producing such wrong headed fanatics and denounce them with the same vehemence that they condemn Bush or Biden.
he stopped the Genocide of millions of Muslims?
Oh really? Facts please. Who, when, where. I must have missed the planned "Genocide" that bush suposedly stopped.
Judas priest, some still like Bush. well good for them. Just support him with the truth, and not Bullshit.
"At a time when religious bigotry might’ve flowed freely...."
When reading aloud, what is the correct pronunciation of "might've?"
Google search suggests "might of."
I believe "might vee" best represents what is written, although the apostrophe does suggest a possessive of some kind such as "the might of Hercules" or "You ree a wee mite of a lad, aren tee you."
rcocean
I suppose you could compare it to the Morgenthau Plan People were pissed, with perfect reason. And the problem was those guys like to do that stuff and how do we keep them from doing it again if they're still alive? Twice in twenty-five years tells you something. Lots of people--from what I've read many in top positions--contemplated it seriously, although, of course, it never became policy.
Same sentiment following 9-11. Fourteen hundred years and no sign of stopping.... Plus we're pissed.
And some were thinking about the future, which Fernandez laid out in his "The Three Conjectures". Any reason not to think of that as "Two Conjectures and One Inevitability"?
As I say, people talked about it, and with more intensity than "glass parking lot". Didn't become policy and won't until Fernandez' conjecture/inevitability.
Washington Examiner
George W. Bush's dreadful 9/11 speech
by Byron York, Chief Political Correspondent
"The only president who delivered a formal speech on 9/11 was former President George W. Bush. And it was terrible."
"...Bush's second jaw-dropper was his oblique comparison of the 19 terrorists who hijacked four commercial jetliners on 9/11 with the rioters who descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6."
'...The bottom line: There is simply no comparison in scale, act, motivation, or anything else between Sept. 11 and Jan. 6. And yet now, a former president suggests that those two enormously dissimilar events were actually similar, both coming from "the same foul spirit."'
"...And now, the press-shy former president is back in the news. At least in the short run, the Shanksville speech could become one of Bush's most quoted. Democrats will certainly cite it and press Republicans to agree with the Republican former president. Trump supporters will denounce it. But everyone should read it to learn how a former president sees not only his time in office 20 years on but the events he helped shape, whether he wants to face them or not."
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/george-w-bushs-dreadful-9-11-speech
Like Biden, GW Bush was a sterling example of the Peter Principle.
Wikipedia:
'...Other commenters made observations similar to the Peter principle long before Peter's research. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's 1763 play Minna von Barnhelm features an army sergeant who shuns the opportunity to move up in the ranks, saying "I am a good sergeant; I might easily make a bad captain, and certainly an even worse general. One knows from experience."'
If an inarticulate mediocrity gives a speech in the woods and there is no one to hear it, does he still have the brains of a doorknob?
Iraq and Afghanistan are not Germany, Japan, or Italy (how come the US bases there never get mentioned?).
Those were countries that developed organically from historical circumstance, they had highly educated and cultured populations, and familiarity with Western norms and traditions. They did not need to be built as nations--only built back better, to coin a phrase.
That we and they were successful is irrelevant to dealing with Islamic countries and movements--unless we intend to ecrasez l'infame, and I don't think we do.
Others might try, and things may develop that way, so stay tuned.
Byron York got it. Horrible.
Fuck Joe Biden and fuck George Bush!
All together now....
And the CIA and the rest of the intelligence (surely I jest) community are bad at their jobs--really bad. What can you say about a group funded with billions of dollars that failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet empire? And they didn't get 9/11, did they? And they gave Bush43 bad intelligence that caused him to invade Iraq...he says so in his memoirs.
You don't know whether to laugh or to cry, but anyone that cites the CIA as authority for anything is either underinformed, stupid, or has an agenda.
So, yes Bush43. You screwed up when you invaded Iraq without a plan to leave. You screwed up when you didn't pursue OBL. You screwed up when you didn't use military justice to try and execute KSM--although with the senior military we have today, he would probably be acquitted.
Well why not, George? As you pointed out shortly after the original 9-11, Islam is the “religion of peace.” And we’ve all seen that in practice over the past two decades, right?
Well why not, George? As you pointed out shortly after the original 9-11, Islam is the “religion of peace.” And we’ve all seen that in practice over the past two decades, right?
"But then there’s this disdain for pluralism in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols. They are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them." -- George Bush, 9/11/2021
Who describes the principles of the Democratic party perfectly while (in context) lambasting the other side.
Here's the worst line in the whole speech:
There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But then there’s this disdain for pluralism in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols. They are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them.
How moronic. Yes Bush, the 911 Terrorists wanted to :defile our national symbols" and "disdained pluralism"! No, they wanted to fucking kill thousands of Americans. And they did. "Pluralism"? what the hell. Meanwhile, no one was killed at Jan 6th except for several Trump supporters one of whom was murdered by Policeman. And why is he bringing this up in a speech on 911? why isn't he talking about Todd Beamer? Or the over 400 First Responders who lost their lives?
He accuses the younger generation of individualism as if that's a bad thing. Thanks for reminding me why people called you a fascist, Georgie Boy.
Narr. Seems to me the nation building is oversold. Not that we're doing too much of it for no gain. But that much of what we do, taken from, figuratively, the military budget is looked at as if it's from the nation building budget and should be judged in that fashion.
There are whole continents full of corrupt, inefficient, ostensibly free governments. That Astan turned into one isn't a failure never before seen.
One tell about the argument is the insistence with implication that we are getting run out of Astan for failure to build a nation. Not true, of course, but the argument continues.
The obvious falsity is....so obvious that one might wonder who thinks anybody believes it.
No one should be elected president who has not been responsible for meeting a payroll in a private enterprise.
I look at Bush43 and I see someone who doesn't understand what it is like to lay off your employees, who are also your friends and neighbors. Biden doesn't even know where money comes from. He thinks someone pays off your brother and your son and you get your share.
This weekend has been very revealing. I got to reflect on the awful people at the head of our national government over the last 30 years. And I am excluding Trump. He wasn't there. He went to see some cops and firemen in New York.
Richard Aubrey@651PM.
I'm not sure I follow your argument, but hope we are in agreement more than not.
If we had treated our secular and cultural foes of 1945 the way we have treated our religious
enemies since 9-11, there would have been 'moderate' Nazis and 'moderate' Japanese militarists back in charge by 1946 (even moreso than in OTL).
The problem is Islam. Pure and simple.
Narr. Yeah. The war of Seventy Score Years. But my point is, behind the forward military presence, if deemed necessary, we can, for pennies on the dollar, put some sand in the gears of cultural transmission.
Girls with some literacy and numeracy have the possible option of marrying up out of the unwashed goat-humping second cousins which have been their portion thus far.
And add the equivalent of high school. And college, eventually.
A guys going to have to up his game to better than an unwashed, illiterate, goat-humping second cousin if he thinks he's going to have a family.
I suspect the girl's family would like a little country school.
But, to the extent that's the "nation building", it's a rounding error in comparison to the outpost's anti-torp defenses, or whatever.
I never thought highly of Dubya, but he has only gone lower in my opinion since 9/11. I could see the necessity of some response in Afghanistan, but the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a halfassed war crime.
@Narr, I used to think much more highly of the man. I wonder how much of that was due to contemplating what it would have been like had Al Gore been President on 9/11/2001. Now I think Bush has to join Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Useless Grant (not a misspelling!), Barack Obama, and James Buchanan in the bottom ten. And Creepy Joe Biden. Somewhere down in Hell Buck Buchanan is cavorting, because the quantity of cannons and muskets his administration shipped to Southern armories on the eve of secession is negligible next to what Biden turned over to the Taliban.
Bik Mike, Grant has been out of the cellar for a long time among professional historians.
He was one of the earliest targets of the Democrat Party Slime Machine, and historians being mostly liberal-left for so long, that affected their judgements.
But as has been observed here often, Republican presidents gradually age out of the contempt and hatred in which they are held by all bien-pensants.
In another century, liberal-left historians will even have something nice to say about Ronnie
Rayguns (ZAP!)
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